Imac

Dear Final Debug: I love Macs. I hate PCs and Windows and Microsoft. I want to buy the new iMac, even though I sort-of fear that the Mac is over. Can you please help me justify the purchase? -- Nick Taylor. Final Debug Responds: The translucent chassis is the first new idea in desktop computer design in the better part of a decade, and anything with an all-in-one design that reminds us of our beloved original 128k Mac charms us. But $1299 is a large amount of money, considering that just this week...

Name: Newer Technology miniStack MAX, 4TB What it is: an aluminum-encased portable external hard drive with 64MB cache memory that offers multiple interfaces for PC or Mac and includes a built-in DVD/CD burner/reader, an SD card reader, three USB ports (for charging or interacting with other devices) along with Firewire 800 and Firewire 400 connections. The device is the same size as an Apple Mac mini hard drive (7.7 inches wide and long, 2.33 inches high and weighing 2.25 pounds)

Apple Computer Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs introduced an iMac computer Wednesday that comes with a remote control and built-in video camera that snaps photos and runs video conferences. In the first of "three acts" at an event at the California Theater in San Jose, Jobs said the new iMac is thinner than last year's all-in-one model. The remote, with six buttons instead of some controls that have 40 or more, lets people control DVDs from across the room, Jobs said. Shipments of Macintosh...

Name: Apple iPad with Retina display and Wi-Fi What it is: Apple's signature tablet with the lightning connector, Bluetooth 4.0 and the ahh-inspiring Retina display with 3.1 million pixels that make images seem lifelike and text look crisp. Its A6X chip is twice as fast as previous-generation chips and offers twice the graphics performance without shortening the battery life. More than 300,000 apps have been uniquely designed for the iPad, and countless iPhone apps also soar on the device.

SuperDisk USB By Imation Corp., $150 For iMac/G3 and USB-equipped Macintoshes www.superdisk.com, 1-888-466-3456 We have here an all-but-essential purchase hanging over the heads of iMac buyers if they plan to acquire or transport files via the time-honored 3.5-inch floppy disk, known also as sneaker net because it lets people carry data from one machine to the next. The price is low and the benefits are huge because the SuperDisk is a two-for-one device that lets...

Apple Inc. officially alerted the world this month it is ready to unveil its latest tinkerings, which many in the tech industry are betting will be a multimedia tablet computing slate, on Wednesday morning. The media hordes and analysts are being invited to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco, where it is presumed company CEO Steve Jobs will show off the latest gadgets and services from Apple headquarters. The invitation is as vague as...

Apple Computer's once-crippling weakness has become its strength. That weakness was, of course, that Macs were not PCs. A year ago, few people wanted a computer that didn't run Microsoft's Windows operating system and all the software published for that platform. Macs still aren't PCs, but now Apple has managed to turn that distinction to its advantage. With the introduction of the iMac last August, Apple's computers have once again become fashion statements, a...

A former Oak Brook school official already facing sexual misconduct charges involving a student was charged Thursday with stealing $20,000 worth of electronic equipment. David Grayson, 64, of La Grange Park, former technology director at Butler Junior High School, has been charged with the theft of four Apple iPods and an Apple iMac computer from the school. The school board fired Grayson in May after he was charged with sexual exploitation of a child and public...

I just love using the new kandy-kolored, tangerine-flake streamlined baby of an iMac now sitting elegantly on a cherrywood living room desk. But as a reviewer I have a problem recommending that anybody actually buy one. Here's the deal: By most of the standards that professional critics use in evaluating a personal computer, an iMac stinks. In fact, if many of us critics had our way, iMac would have been the end of the road for Apple Computer Inc. But the...

Among the things I love (and hate) about this job is the endless scrum among computer users over Mac vs. PC. Should one pledge loyalty to Steve Jobs at Apple Computer Inc. or to Bill Gates at Microsoft Corp.? With Apple owning only about 6 percent of the world market, the tiny minority of Mac-siders can be extremely defensive. They bristle at the arrogance and/or condescension among some PC-siders. One side insists: Macs don't crash like PCs do. Macs remain...

By planting Apple's new iMac on the cover of Time just after the magazine honored Rudy Giuliani as its Person of the Year, America's venerable newsweekly planted the equivalent of a big wet kiss on an embattled company's fevered brow. If anybody needs a little help from his friends, it is Steve Jobs, chief executive, apparently for life, of America's most interesting computer manufacturing outfit. When I look at Apple sales figures, I recall my research a few years back when I...

Apple Computer Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs introduced an iMac computer Wednesday that comes with a remote control and built-in video camera that snaps photos and runs video conferences. In the first of "three acts" at an event at the California Theater in San Jose, Jobs said the new iMac is thinner than last year's all-in-one model. The remote, with six buttons instead of some controls that have 40 or more, lets people control DVDs from across the room, Jobs said. Shipments of Macintosh...

Desktop computers don't get much stroking. We poke them, haul them and bang on them when they upset us. But stroking? Hardly. That's because most desktop computers do not respond to touch. They are squatting, dispassionate helpers. They do not move closer when we're feeling cozy or turn away when we need space. At least they didn't until last week. Apple's new iMac does these things--you can stroke it into position--and that makes this design friendlier than the original.

If you doubt that adage about the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence, let me submit a review of Apple's brand new G5 iMac by a bona fide, certified Windows wonk: me. A lot of money is riding on whether this machine, which looks like an iPod digital music player grown psychedelically gigantic, can win with the waves of PC users who own Windows-compatible iPods. The Macintosh mavens are betting that elegance and ease of use will make a new G5 the...

Call it the old Snow Jobs. You know what a snow job is, don't you? It's a master of salesmanship hitting just the right chords. It's a promoter playing the customer with the deft ease of an Itzhak Perlman setting aside his Stradivarius to strum a $4 ukulele. The other day a group of Silicon Valley fiddlers dispatched by Apple Computer Inc.'s CEO For Life Steve Jobs took your humble correspondent up to Apple Computer Inc.'s lavish boardroom above downtown Chicago and...

Who says bigger is better? Certainly not the people at Apple. The company that redefined how computers look has outdone itself again with its latest version of the iMac. Measuring just 2 inches thick and less than 2 feet wide, the new iMac looks more like a laptop than the megapowerful desktop model that it is. But don't let the size fool you. The base model--which starts at $1,299--includes a G5 processor, a slot-loading CD/DVD drive, an 80 gigabyte hard drive and speakers.

If you doubt that adage about the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence, let me submit a review of Apple's brand new G5 iMac by a bona fide, certified Windows wonk: me. A lot of money is riding on whether this machine, which looks like an iPod digital music player grown psychedelically gigantic, can win with the waves of PC users who own Windows-compatible iPods. The Macintosh mavens are betting that elegance and ease of use will make a new G5 the...

Q. I understand that the new version of Roxio Easy Media Creator contains the "Ken Burns" effect, which allows you to pan and zoom in or out on a still photo. I bought the Microsoft Plus Digital Media program because it can create this same effect, but when I went to try it, I was restricted to using templates that forced me to use the program's beginning and ending points for my pans or zooms. I wanted to be able to select my own spots to start and end my zoom or pan. Does...

Ever since Apple Computer Inc. introduced the first iMac in August of 1998, there really has been no question regarding the superiority of the design. Here was (and is) an elegantly designed, high-powered, all-in-one home computer with a very small desktop footprint and a sticker price to match. Apple followed those original cathode ray tube iMacs with today's fabulously futuristic flat panel LCD iMacs, another artistic triumph that offers leading-edge computing power in a...

New homes tend to have open kitchens with countertop islands where people eat perched atop bar stools--and then there are all the rest of our homes. The ones with breakfast nooks. Keeping this often outdated space alive and fresh for modern living can be a challenge. Plenty of houses have them, whether they were built when movies became talkies or when "The Brady Bunch" was on television--for the first time in the 1970s. Breakfast nooks were created around the turn of the...